” Lincoln”

• Not The  Only One!
• Post #168
• 19 Dec 24
• ” “Lincoln”
• Howdy!,
• Welcome to my weird  brain once more.  I don’t  know  if you are like  me or not , but I  feel  like we have  so many media outlets. I’m not really  thinking  so much about news outlets  or sports outlets, but more so all of the streaming  services like Netflix, or Paramount, Hulu, Disney, Pluto, and then it just  seems like a new one popping  up every week.  We love choices, and we have  plenty of them, but I just  never feel  likes there  is ever anything  on TV worth while  watching.  I will  confess that I  have  watched shows or programs on TV , and found it* unfulfilling and  not satisfying.  You know  what I’m talking about  when  you  felt like you just  wasted your time or money  if it was a movie  out, and thought to yourself that I’m  never going to get that time back☺️☺️. Another  example  could  be watching four quarters of  football  over a three hour stretch, and the final  score is three – zip. I could  have observed the highlights  in thirty seconds  on ESPN, and  feel  like  I  used  my time more wisely.
• Ok, so where am I  going  with this?  Well I  recently went  to Florida to visit my daughter and  her family.  I found  myself with  some free time and  found  myself  watching a  documentary on , you guessed it, Lincoln.  It was done well and there were a few new pieces of  information about  his incredible  life, that was marked with  much suffering and  loss. I’m not going to  spend our time recapping the life of  Lincoln.  Often  a presidency is  defined by  some significant event. Most often  it’s defined  by a war. Nixon  the Vietnam war. Bush the war on terror.  Roosevelt is  rightly paired with  pearl  Harbor and WWII. Reagan the cold war and  for Lincoln it was the war between the  states. It  wasn’t new information for me but more so a reminder , but the war between  the  states pitted family  members against  one another , and I’m not sure if it’s some kind of strange irony or what, but both  sides used the same Bible, both  prayed to the same God and both sides believed  that God was on their  side , and both  found  scripture verses to justify an armed conflict.  Where they  didn’t  agree was , one side thought  it was OK to own other  people as property and the other side, not so much.
• This isn’t about  history, slavery, or even about wars , but about  worship. I don’t  know particularly  that Mr.  Lincoln was a religious  man, but many  of his speeches leaned in that direction, and yes even  back in the 1800s they  had good or great speech writers☺️☺️. Whenever and wherever I  travel, I usually  seek out some  place  to worship . I’ve visited my daughter’s  church  on multiple occasions and  they  have a  great  pastor.  You can  just  tell  that he loves what he does, and he does  it with  great  conviction  and  passion.  It probably  begins  with  his preparation.  He is from  Arkansas and  yes, he has the accent  to go along with that,☺️☺️ and he mixes some humor  in his messages, which  for me, just makes it just  that much more  enjoyable. 
• You are probably  still  looking for  the worship part of the story, and for that, we have to turn the clock back some thirty years ago.  I know that  people have  been  worshipping  almost  since the beginning of  time, and that people  worship  a wide array of people, places and things, but for this story we only  have  to  journey  back three decades.  When  my daughter  was a little  tyke we lived in  a townhouse  in Va. Beach at the time , and  one of our neighbors who had a couple of  kids that were a few years older than  my daughter, but she invited my daughter to  vocation  Bible  school.  The readers digest  version of  the  story is that at the end of the week, they  have a program that  recaps the week and showcases what the  work,  that the kids put in all week.  So my daughter  being  four at the time was on the first row, being  one of the smaller, younger kids. I don’t  remember what they  were  singing, I just know  that my kid was the loudest and the most off key of all of the other kids. ☺️☺️ My daughter even  to this very  day, just  loves loves music, but can’t  carry a tune in a pale☺️☺️. My daughter was the highlight of the  program and  while  the  audience was  laughing at  her, they  just  didn’t  understand that my daughter was  making a joyful noise unto the Lord☺️☺️. Some may have thought that her performance and enthusiasm was  over the top,  but she just  simply didn’t  care and just  kept on keeping on. ☺️☺️. When  we pull out that old VHS tape , she is mostly  mortified, but being  a parent  herself  now, has learned to  laugh at  herself and  realize just  how cute that she was when  she was that age. One of those memories, that you wouldn’t  trade for anything  in the world ☺️☺️.
• Still  looking for the worship? Well  my daughter has  been  in Florida for four years now and  we don’t  get  opportunities to  worship together as we once did. So!, when  we do get an opportunity to  do so, I’m greatly excited, because even though she has learned to reel in her voice, her enthusiasm for worshipping  God has not changed over the  years. I just  love and feel  so blessed to  be able to  see her interact with God in a worship  service. I know that none of us are pure, but there  is something about  her worship that strikes me that way. There is an emotional intensity that  is present, whether her hands are raised or not. Regardless of  if there  are tears or not, or if there is some movement of the Spirit over her* Continents. It’s genuine and  real, and while  so many  others have the look of I’m just  here, her face beams with the  excitement of I’m here  to meet with and do business with  God.  I don’t  know  how to  explain it or to properly  capture it all in words, but it’s something to  behold. It makes me wonder what  it was like, when Jacob was very  old and  it says that he leaned on staff and  worshipped.  I think the other  component of it is that she gets it , and that she understands that it’s all for the audience of “One”. I can’t  help  but feel a little  proud that the chain of  faith  was not broken or interrupted with  her and  that her faith  is her own. We just see it over and over again where kids walk away  from the faith that was entrusted to them.  Some come back, but many  do not, and instead of it being a  war  between the  states, it becomes  something  else, just as or more devastating because of  the eternal  consequences and  it’s  a conflict of faith and  a crisis of  no faith.
• Still here we are  in this season of  advent and expectancy , and if we should  ever be able  to muster up worship, it should  be this time of year.  I’m not sure why, but for some reason I  feel sorry  for people  who have  their  worship contained to once a week  in a church  service, or  only  see worship as music.  I think  maybe  the bigger  crime of injustice is  celebrating  Christmas and missing the  real  significance of  Christmas and  why we give gifts in the first place. There is a magic to the spirit of  Christmas and  we often  just  miss it and  it’s lost in all of the  hustle and bustle of the season.  There is this command to  sit and be still and  to know , the revelation and  power and  might of God. I’m not alone  here, but I  believe  that  is one of the hardest things for us to do, is to be still and to make  room for God. Make room for the things that He wants to say to us and  the things that He wants to do in our lives. On some level, that is the entire message of  Christmas  in a nut shell. Do we make room for God in our hearts and lives or are we to busy trying Manufacturer joy of our own? It’s a legitimate question that  maybe we should  reflect  on.  I don’t  believe  that we should  feel  deflated  post Christmas  as many  are.
• How many times have we heard someone  say that they need a vacation away  from their  vacation☺️, or one to recover or recoup from.  If God has sent us the Prince of Peace, why is peace the one thing that  is so *elusive , at least for so many?  Christmas is  a lot of things, but more so than anything else its the announcement  that we can have peace with  God. We may never have peace on earth  in the traditional  sense that most people  think of. However , peace with  God allows  us  to have peace in a very ever growing  more by the day chaotic   world.  We sing Christmas  carols, and some of them have a lot of truth to  them, in fact some of them  are  straight  out of scripture.  I think that  Christmas  is just  one more thing  that  we have distorted and turned on it’s head. The birth of  Jesus was the announcement of  peace on earth, but the holiday season  seems to be anything  but that. So many people are just  stressed out of their  minds. We have  so much  anxiety about  having to deal with  family, preparing  meal, parties to attend and more deadlines and  boxes to check than any  CEO  at the largest of corporations ☺️☺️. Anything and everything but the semblance of peace.
• Shopping and gift giving  seems to  be at the center of what drives Christmas  for so many. On the surface, absolutely nothing wrong with that.  It’s was God’s  hallmark  signature to give the very  best. He sent and He gave us the   one thing that we needed most, whether we  realized it or not. It wasn’t  like getting  underwear or socks, just  because  you know that  it’s something that you can always  us☺️☺️, but something  so much  more on a surgical level to cut away the  thing that was crippling our hearts and  keeping  them  from  operating at optimum compacity.  The gift of God’s son , had one purpose and it was to deal with  our sin. The eradication of sin is a life long process, and we have  absolutely  zero  ability to  deal with it  on our own.
• The word is Chasm, it’s  a word to describe a broad distance.  It can be a fissure in the earth, a rock or some other  surface. It could be the difference  between  being rich or  poor or some harsh political narrative, where we would  never agree, but the picture that often forms in my mind is the Grand Canyon.  It’s a beautiful place, but it’s  a vast chasm, and we can’t just  get  from  one side to the other, and that’s where we  find ourselves with  God , a chasm away with no hope of being able  to connect. On the one-side, everything that  is good , holy , righteous and pure. Pure light, pure wisdom and  pure love, and on the other side  everything that is not those things. ☺️ Maybe  it’s another one of those extremely  ironic things, in that so many spend so much  time and effort trying to  work their way  across that chasm, when  God has already done the work and provided a solution to our  greatest need.
• Christmas can be a spiritual hangover for so many. We are just  simply  drained, and if we are honest, some will  be asking  themselves, what was it all for? We may spend globs of money on things that really  aren’t  that special, and probably  with  the exception of  getting a diamond ring and getting  engaged, will probably  not be remembered  much past a few months.  I think  many of our Christmas  gifts are hidden  in the same closet with  those new year’s  resolutions ☺️☺️. Yeah!, there is the saying  of ” It’s the thought  that counts”, really? I’m probably not a savvy gift giver, because if I  give gifts, I’ve always  believed that  it should  be something  meaningful to  the person that’s  receiving the  gift. I think that the concept of  the  ” white elephant ” is a one size fits all mentality, but of course I could  be wrong about  that ☺️☺️.
• There is this one thing that does get me pretty  excited and that is the whole idea of regifting . If you think that it’s pretty  cheesy  to give someone something that someone else gave  to you, then  I’m pretty  much in that camp as well☺️.  I know that I  just  said that I  was excited about it and  I’m not contradicting myself, so I  guess it gets  down to this  one thing that  can just  be life changing and life giving  , when you regift it and  that is the gift of Christ. God has given us this tremendous gift and I’m pretty  sure that He wants us to share it with others, or to regift it☺️☺️.  When  we have and share the true meaning of  Christmas with  others, we aren’t  spent , deflated, or somehow  spiritually hungover, because we have  the true meaning of Christmas and  we know  that it’s not confined  to any one month or particular part of the year. When we truly  get  what Christmas  is about  , it energizes us not drains us.
• I’m going to  play the  dumb card, and I  get that  some  of  you don’t  believe that  I’m playing  at all☺️☺️ I’m just  not sure what people are  celebrating at Christmas, if they  don’t  believe in  the  Christmas  story. I don’t  know, maybe  that’s why it feels  hollow and  just a little  over the top. If I’m being legit, I think that they are mooching off of other  people’s joy. How do you  take Christ  out of Christmas?  Isn’t  that like  one of those meatless  Lasagnas, or  going to  the beach and  there is no sand, sun or even  waves and water ?☺️☺️. Maybe, just  maybe  that explains our less than satisfied souls at what should  be the most joyous of  times. Take a minute and  think about those DIY projects and  just  how important it  is  to  have the right tool, for the right  job. It may  be a slight  simplification, but you wouldn’t  use a hammer , where it calls for a screwdriver, or vise versa. How can  we ever expect to fully  take in and  experience  the joy  of Christmas with  a cold or closed off heart, it’s just the wrong posture for receiving the  greatest gift ever given.
• I will  sometimes  get comments about  being  vague, or that my bread crumbs , just  don’t  connect all of the dots. So today let’s just get to  the nitty gritty of the Christmas  story.  There are times when  something  will  carry  more than just one meaning and there are just  countless examples of that  in the English  language.  God announced to shepherds in the field the birth  of the long awaited Messiah.  He didn’t announce it to a king in some castle or palace, but to the lowly, because He wanted to make sure that it was for all people, not just the elite. God had promised that a  great light was coming into the world and that light was and is and will  always be Jesus.  That light is  the purest representation of  God, because  He is God, and He came into  the world to  keep  us from  continuing to  walk in spiritual darkness. Those who do not get the true meaning of  Christmas, continue to  walk in spiritual darkness, even though they  are deceived into  thinking that it’s light. Maybe  it’s pride that keeps us from  receiving this great  gift, while  we  continue to give gifts, that are not done in the spirit of the season.  We can  only escape the spiritual darkness, by becoming  full participants in  the family of God, which  is only and always through   Christ Jesus.
• The book of Isaiah has many  prophetic  scriptures, but none captures the spirit of the season  more than chapter 9, 6-7 ” Unto us a child  is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulders, and He shall  be called  wonderful  councilor, mighty  God, everlasting Father and  the Prince of  Peace, there it is again….Peace!  His mission, like no other, from the  cradle ” manger ” to  the cross ” salvation “, for all who choose to  believe and except the gift of Christmas.  Merry Christmas!!
• Till Next Time ✌️ Peace!
• Sandy The Southerner

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